What do we do about east Burlington?

Published: Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 02:25 PM.

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Kirk Puckett grew up on Burlington’s east side and graduated from Cummings High in 1974 — back in the school’s infancy.

A faculty member at Alamance Community College and former Burlington police officer, Puckett is the first to admit that changes — not all good — have come to east Burlington.

Puckett’s father, Raymond, owned Idle Hour, a working class bar on North Church Street. Puckett said his father’s business catered largely to men employed at any of three local plants — Western Electric on Graham-Hopedale Road, Burlington Industries’ Pioneer Plant on Graham Street and Associated Transport, also on North Church.

The elder Puckett sold the business in 1979.

“He was kind of beginning to feel the winds of change,” Puckett said, noting that none of the three plants whose workers supported Idle Hour exists today. Thousands of workers were furloughed and their jobs never replaced by new industry.

Western Electric — once Alamance County’s largest employer with more than 4,000 workers — was the first to begin cutbacks. Associated Transport moved its operation not long thereafter while the Pioneer Plant struggled for decades before finally closing.

Those job losses may not be the only reason east Burlington has suffered, but they’ve contributed to the woes.

“Slowly but surely I’ve seen that side of town change,” Puckett said. “There are plenty of good folks still there and for people who have lived there a long time, it’s home.”

But a ride along North Church Street proves things aren’t bustling as they once bustled. Pawn shops and businesses that deal in used appliances and used tires dot the landscape. Internet gaming cafes are easy to find as are vacant buildings. Cum-Park Plaza — once Burlington’s premier shopping attraction — has more than its share of empty stores.

Puckett is like most Burlington residents when asked what might be done to re-energize the city’s east side.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”

THE CITY’S ELECTED officials aren’t sure what to do, either, and they’re asking residents of east Burlington for help. They’re forming a focus group made up of east Burlington residents. The group’s first meeting is at 6 p.m. on March 7 at Fairchild Community Center.

Mayor Ronnie Wall suggested the formation of the focus group when members of the Burlington City Council met earlier this month. At the time, Wall said he’d toured east Burlington with a resident who called to complain about the decline of the area and the city’s apparent lack of effort to rectify it.

Wall took umbrage with the complaint — noting Community Development Block Grant projects aimed at east Burlington, infrastructure improvements, a crackdown on junked cars and the placement of Community Oriented Policing offices along North Church Street.

Wall said with a focus group format, east Burlington residents could suggest projects for their neighborhoods, which members of the city council would then review.

Wall, mayor since 2007, is a product of east Burlington — having grown up on Sellars Mill Road, about a quarter-mile north of Cum-Park Plaza. He graduated from Cummings in 1975 and said he’d love as much as anyone to see that side of town re-energized.

“I’m very proud of where I grew up,” Wall said. “I’m very proud of where I graduated high school.”

He said when he was coming along, his neighborhood was a bustling place — with doctors, lawyers and engineers among his family’s neighbors. In retrospect, it seems an idyllic time.

“It’s just not quite the same as it was when I grew up there,” Wall acknowledged. “What can you do to make things better? I’d love for someone to tell me.”

He hopes the focus group helps.

“We want feedback,” Wall said. “We want the people of east Burlington to know we’re doing something — we’re working for all people. I’m hoping this is the first step in a positive direction.”

City Manager Harold Owen said a good deal of money has already gone toward addressing east Burlington’s needs. CDBG funds years ago paid for the construction of both the North Park and Fairchild community centers. That same money went to build a library at North Park.

Last year, the city received $460,000 in CDBG money, all going to projects in east and north Burlington — everything from new soccer fields across from Burlington Athletic Stadium to sidewalks on Ireland Street.

The city, Owen said, has put an emphasis on policing in east Burlington, working to make residents feel safer. Council members worked to have the Terrace Apartments (formerly Autumn Lane Apartments) on North Church demolished after they’d become an eyesore and attracted riffraff.

But Owen admitted there are no quick fixes.

“If anyone had a solution, they’d be a brilliant person,” he said.

Owen said he frequently fields questions from individuals wanting to know why the city doesn’t have retail businesses build in east Burlington. Such decisions aren’t up to the city.

Owen said executives with national companies have business models that have to work before they build. If they run the numbers and don’t see a profit, he said, it’s not going to happen. Those businesses, Owen said, go where the customers are.

“There’s not one fix-all type philosophy,” Owen said.

HAROLD JAMES GRADUATED from Cummings in 1973. While in high school, he worked for Christopher’s Boutique, a once-happening clothing store in Cum-Park Plaza.

“This was the side of town to be on in those days,” James said.

James still lives in east Burlington, but he’s like lots of others there — a little frustrated about the decline in his neighborhood and more frustrated as to how to go about addressing the problem.

“There’s just no growth,” James said. “We’re too far off the interstate. People building realize that’s the place to go. Where are you going to make the most money? It’s simple economics.”

Councilman Celo Faucette noted there has been growth in east Burlington, just not enough of it. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet and Sav A Lot Food Store opened side-by-side on North Church Street in recent years. Walmart built not long ago on South Graham-Hopedale Road.

“East Burlington feels like they get nothing,” Faucette said. “We’re trying, but most everything is going to the west. It’s going to take private money to rebuild.”

Some are helping.

Charles Hursey opened Hursey Bar-B-Q Express in Church Street Plaza — near Cum-Park Plaza and across from Ollie’s — two years ago. He had the 1,900-square-foot building constructed from scratch.

It’s a pretty place. Stop in for a sandwich and you’ll see a framed certificate indicating the city has recognized the establishment for its beautification efforts.

“Traffic over there is tremendous,” Hursey said. “We thought that with so many people on that side of town it’d do well and we were right. We’re satisfied with it, we’re happy.”

He said he’s had east Burlington residents call and thank him for building in their community.

GALE ANDERSON AND his wife, Jean, built on Morningside Drive in east Burlington in the 1960s. They still live there, their house not far off Sellars Mill Road.

Anderson said he loves his house and large lot that includes a workshop at the back. But he said he’s bothered by a group home for wayward teens that in recent years has been located across the street.

“Everytime I look out my door, there’s a police car over there,” Anderson said. “I’m getting good and tired of it, especially when we have company.”

He said he wasn’t told beforehand the group home might be placed there. There was never, Anderson said, an opportunity for him or his wife to offer their opinions on such a facility being situated so close.

Why do these things, he asked, always seem to wind up in east Burlington and not across town?

Anderson said any downfall of east Burlington has been a gradual thing — not one specific incident that caused the decline. The closing of Western Electric certainly contributed to the problem, he said, as did losing major retailers like Lowe’s Home Improvement to west Burlington.

“If I want to get a bolt and screw I have to spend half a day driving over there,” Anderson complained.

Dave Forrester graduated from Cummings in 1972 and has spent most of his life living in east Burlington. He lives on North Sellars Mill Road and for years managed the Wendy’s restaurant at Cum-Park Plaza.

He said the closing of Western Electric “changed the demographics” of east Burlington and said the rumor he’s heard for a long while is that real estate agents steer their clients to buy houses on the other side of the tracks.

Forrester said he’d love to see more nice restaurants close to his residence, though in his next breath he admitted, “They’re going to build where the people are.”

As housing prices in east Burlington have fallen, more residences have turned to rentals. Minority occupants displaced what was once an almost all-white population.

The student populations at schools in east Burlington represent those changes. Cummings is today 8 percent white – with 46 percent of the enrollment made up of Hispanic and 43 percent black students. The makeup of the enrollment at neighboring Broadview Middle School is almost identical.

Medical facilities are in short supply. Alamance County Hospital was closed — though assorted county offices now fill it — with the opening of Alamance Regional Medical Center off Huffman Mill Road.

Chris Verdeck, an assistant chief with the Burlington Police Department, said there’s little difference in the crime rate between east and west Burlington — with Webb Avenue serving as the dividing line. The numbers bear Verdeck out.

There were 52 robberies investigated in east Burlington in 2012 and 56 investigated on the west side of town. Cases of aggravated assault were almost identical — 131 in the east and 129 in the west. There was a considerably higher number of larcenies — 1,520 to 925 — in west Burlington. Verdeck said that’s because of the greater number of retail shops in the west side of town.

HOLT SKINNER,A Rolling Road resident, said downtown serves as the gateway to east Burlington and said the city has extended so far west it’s probably more accurate to refer to the city’s eastern side as beginning at City Park.

He said Greensboro has gone far toward refurbishing its east side and said downtown Durham has been greatly improved following years of decline. There’s no reason Burlington can’t do the same with its east side, Skinner said.

“I hear people asking, ‘What are we going to do about east Burlington?’ as if it’s an option,” he said.

Skinner said he has nothing but respect for Wall and the efforts he’s made to improve east Burlington. He said he hopes Wall is re-elected so he might continue the work.

“Ronnie Wall has a passion,” Skinner said. “But he’s just one person. He needs the help of others.”

Skinner blames previous mayors who pushed to extend Burlington’s boundaries past the Guilford County line while neglecting the city’s east side. He said when business executives consider moving to Burlington, they’re going to inevitably first take a drive through town.

“They’d say, ‘What’s going on here?’ ”Skinner said of their reaction to seeing the east side.

Making a decision to build to the west would be easy, he said.

Skinner said previous mayors and councils forgot what could have been natural ties between Burlington and its neighbors to the east — Mebane, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, included. He said Burlington also erred by continuing to allow boardinghouses, which he refers to as “the root” of problems on the city’s east side.

Skinner is a historian and noted much of the city’s early neighborhoods were to the east — in the areas along Ireland, Rainey, Broad and North Main streets.

“That’s the city’s original historic district,” Skinner said.

TOM JAMISON IS another Rolling Road resident and a member of the board of directors of the South Beverly Hills Neighborhood Association. The organization has been in existence about 12 years.

Jamison said there are no hard and fast numbers as to the association’s membership. The board of directors holds periodic meetings at May Memorial Library, but Jamison said the greater aim of the organization is to make it so neighbors know and look out for one another.

He said they hold a neighborhood block party on the Fourth of July and a Christmas dinner where residents are invited. Police and fire officials are welcome at those gatherings and have been supportive, Jamison said. He bragged particularly about the involvement of Police Chief Mike Williams and other officers.

“A lot of it’s just social,” Jamison said. “You get to know your neighbors. If you’re going for a walk, you throw up your hand to your friends and speak.”

Jamison said the quality of life in the South Beverly Hills neighborhood has improved considerably since the Terrace Apartments were demolished. He said whereas pedestrians once roamed their streets at all hours of the night, that’s seldom an issue anymore.

A neighboring car wash where noise was a problem no longer exists and the speed limit along Rolling Road has been decreased from 35 to 25 mph. South Beverly Hills has suffered through the recent economic downturn like other neighborhoods, Jamison said, with too many houses in foreclosure.

But he said he feels the area will rebound as he hopes will all of east Burlington.

“If I know someone, I stop and speak,” Jamison said of those he’s met through the Neighborhood Association. “You have a tendency to look out for those you know.”

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?

What: A resident-driven, ongoing community work group whose members will identify the challenges facing east Burlington and come up with possible solutions.

Where: Fairchild Community Center at 827 S. Graham-Hopedale Road.

When: 6 p.m. on March 7.

Who’s invited: Any resident or stakeholder interested in east Burlington.

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Kirk Puckett grew up on Burlington’s east side and graduated from Cummings High in 1974 — back in the school’s infancy.

A faculty member at Alamance Community College and former Burlington police officer, Puckett is the first to admit that changes — not all good — have come to east Burlington.

Puckett’s father, Raymond, owned Idle Hour, a working class bar on North Church Street. Puckett said his father’s business catered largely to men employed at any of three local plants — Western Electric on Graham-Hopedale Road, Burlington Industries’ Pioneer Plant on Graham Street and Associated Transport, also on North Church.

The elder Puckett sold the business in 1979.

“He was kind of beginning to feel the winds of change,” Puckett said, noting that none of the three plants whose workers supported Idle Hour exists today. Thousands of workers were furloughed and their jobs never replaced by new industry.

Western Electric — once Alamance County’s largest employer with more than 4,000 workers — was the first to begin cutbacks. Associated Transport moved its operation not long thereafter while the Pioneer Plant struggled for decades before finally closing.

Those job losses may not be the only reason east Burlington has suffered, but they’ve contributed to the woes.

“Slowly but surely I’ve seen that side of town change,” Puckett said. “There are plenty of good folks still there and for people who have lived there a long time, it’s home.”

But a ride along North Church Street proves things aren’t bustling as they once bustled. Pawn shops and businesses that deal in used appliances and used tires dot the landscape. Internet gaming cafes are easy to find as are vacant buildings. Cum-Park Plaza — once Burlington’s premier shopping attraction — has more than its share of empty stores.

Puckett is like most Burlington residents when asked what might be done to re-energize the city’s east side.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”

THE CITY’S ELECTED officials aren’t sure what to do, either, and they’re asking residents of east Burlington for help. They’re forming a focus group made up of east Burlington residents. The group’s first meeting is at 6 p.m. on March 7 at Fairchild Community Center.

Mayor Ronnie Wall suggested the formation of the focus group when members of the Burlington City Council met earlier this month. At the time, Wall said he’d toured east Burlington with a resident who called to complain about the decline of the area and the city’s apparent lack of effort to rectify it.

Wall took umbrage with the complaint — noting Community Development Block Grant projects aimed at east Burlington, infrastructure improvements, a crackdown on junked cars and the placement of Community Oriented Policing offices along North Church Street.

Wall said with a focus group format, east Burlington residents could suggest projects for their neighborhoods, which members of the city council would then review.

Wall, mayor since 2007, is a product of east Burlington — having grown up on Sellars Mill Road, about a quarter-mile north of Cum-Park Plaza. He graduated from Cummings in 1975 and said he’d love as much as anyone to see that side of town re-energized.

“I’m very proud of where I grew up,” Wall said. “I’m very proud of where I graduated high school.”

He said when he was coming along, his neighborhood was a bustling place — with doctors, lawyers and engineers among his family’s neighbors. In retrospect, it seems an idyllic time.

“It’s just not quite the same as it was when I grew up there,” Wall acknowledged. “What can you do to make things better? I’d love for someone to tell me.”

He hopes the focus group helps.

“We want feedback,” Wall said. “We want the people of east Burlington to know we’re doing something — we’re working for all people. I’m hoping this is the first step in a positive direction.”

City Manager Harold Owen said a good deal of money has already gone toward addressing east Burlington’s needs. CDBG funds years ago paid for the construction of both the North Park and Fairchild community centers. That same money went to build a library at North Park.

Last year, the city received $460,000 in CDBG money, all going to projects in east and north Burlington — everything from new soccer fields across from Burlington Athletic Stadium to sidewalks on Ireland Street.

The city, Owen said, has put an emphasis on policing in east Burlington, working to make residents feel safer. Council members worked to have the Terrace Apartments (formerly Autumn Lane Apartments) on North Church demolished after they’d become an eyesore and attracted riffraff.

But Owen admitted there are no quick fixes.

“If anyone had a solution, they’d be a brilliant person,” he said.

Owen said he frequently fields questions from individuals wanting to know why the city doesn’t have retail businesses build in east Burlington. Such decisions aren’t up to the city.

Owen said executives with national companies have business models that have to work before they build. If they run the numbers and don’t see a profit, he said, it’s not going to happen. Those businesses, Owen said, go where the customers are.

“There’s not one fix-all type philosophy,” Owen said.

HAROLD JAMES GRADUATED from Cummings in 1973. While in high school, he worked for Christopher’s Boutique, a once-happening clothing store in Cum-Park Plaza.

“This was the side of town to be on in those days,” James said.

James still lives in east Burlington, but he’s like lots of others there — a little frustrated about the decline in his neighborhood and more frustrated as to how to go about addressing the problem.

“There’s just no growth,” James said. “We’re too far off the interstate. People building realize that’s the place to go. Where are you going to make the most money? It’s simple economics.”

Councilman Celo Faucette noted there has been growth in east Burlington, just not enough of it. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet and Sav A Lot Food Store opened side-by-side on North Church Street in recent years. Walmart built not long ago on South Graham-Hopedale Road.

“East Burlington feels like they get nothing,” Faucette said. “We’re trying, but most everything is going to the west. It’s going to take private money to rebuild.”

Some are helping.

Charles Hursey opened Hursey Bar-B-Q Express in Church Street Plaza — near Cum-Park Plaza and across from Ollie’s — two years ago. He had the 1,900-square-foot building constructed from scratch.

It’s a pretty place. Stop in for a sandwich and you’ll see a framed certificate indicating the city has recognized the establishment for its beautification efforts.

“Traffic over there is tremendous,” Hursey said. “We thought that with so many people on that side of town it’d do well and we were right. We’re satisfied with it, we’re happy.”

He said he’s had east Burlington residents call and thank him for building in their community.

GALE ANDERSON AND his wife, Jean, built on Morningside Drive in east Burlington in the 1960s. They still live there, their house not far off Sellars Mill Road.

Anderson said he loves his house and large lot that includes a workshop at the back. But he said he’s bothered by a group home for wayward teens that in recent years has been located across the street.

“Everytime I look out my door, there’s a police car over there,” Anderson said. “I’m getting good and tired of it, especially when we have company.”

He said he wasn’t told beforehand the group home might be placed there. There was never, Anderson said, an opportunity for him or his wife to offer their opinions on such a facility being situated so close.

Why do these things, he asked, always seem to wind up in east Burlington and not across town?

Anderson said any downfall of east Burlington has been a gradual thing — not one specific incident that caused the decline. The closing of Western Electric certainly contributed to the problem, he said, as did losing major retailers like Lowe’s Home Improvement to west Burlington.

“If I want to get a bolt and screw I have to spend half a day driving over there,” Anderson complained.

Dave Forrester graduated from Cummings in 1972 and has spent most of his life living in east Burlington. He lives on North Sellars Mill Road and for years managed the Wendy’s restaurant at Cum-Park Plaza.

He said the closing of Western Electric “changed the demographics” of east Burlington and said the rumor he’s heard for a long while is that real estate agents steer their clients to buy houses on the other side of the tracks.

Forrester said he’d love to see more nice restaurants close to his residence, though in his next breath he admitted, “They’re going to build where the people are.”

As housing prices in east Burlington have fallen, more residences have turned to rentals. Minority occupants displaced what was once an almost all-white population.

The student populations at schools in east Burlington represent those changes. Cummings is today 8 percent white – with 46 percent of the enrollment made up of Hispanic and 43 percent black students. The makeup of the enrollment at neighboring Broadview Middle School is almost identical.

Medical facilities are in short supply. Alamance County Hospital was closed — though assorted county offices now fill it — with the opening of Alamance Regional Medical Center off Huffman Mill Road.

Chris Verdeck, an assistant chief with the Burlington Police Department, said there’s little difference in the crime rate between east and west Burlington — with Webb Avenue serving as the dividing line. The numbers bear Verdeck out.

There were 52 robberies investigated in east Burlington in 2012 and 56 investigated on the west side of town. Cases of aggravated assault were almost identical — 131 in the east and 129 in the west. There was a considerably higher number of larcenies — 1,520 to 925 — in west Burlington. Verdeck said that’s because of the greater number of retail shops in the west side of town.

HOLT SKINNER,A Rolling Road resident, said downtown serves as the gateway to east Burlington and said the city has extended so far west it’s probably more accurate to refer to the city’s eastern side as beginning at City Park.

He said Greensboro has gone far toward refurbishing its east side and said downtown Durham has been greatly improved following years of decline. There’s no reason Burlington can’t do the same with its east side, Skinner said.

“I hear people asking, ‘What are we going to do about east Burlington?’ as if it’s an option,” he said.

Skinner said he has nothing but respect for Wall and the efforts he’s made to improve east Burlington. He said he hopes Wall is re-elected so he might continue the work.

“Ronnie Wall has a passion,” Skinner said. “But he’s just one person. He needs the help of others.”

Skinner blames previous mayors who pushed to extend Burlington’s boundaries past the Guilford County line while neglecting the city’s east side. He said when business executives consider moving to Burlington, they’re going to inevitably first take a drive through town.

“They’d say, ‘What’s going on here?’ ”Skinner said of their reaction to seeing the east side.

Making a decision to build to the west would be easy, he said.

Skinner said previous mayors and councils forgot what could have been natural ties between Burlington and its neighbors to the east — Mebane, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, included. He said Burlington also erred by continuing to allow boardinghouses, which he refers to as “the root” of problems on the city’s east side.

Skinner is a historian and noted much of the city’s early neighborhoods were to the east — in the areas along Ireland, Rainey, Broad and North Main streets.

“That’s the city’s original historic district,” Skinner said.

TOM JAMISON IS another Rolling Road resident and a member of the board of directors of the South Beverly Hills Neighborhood Association. The organization has been in existence about 12 years.

Jamison said there are no hard and fast numbers as to the association’s membership. The board of directors holds periodic meetings at May Memorial Library, but Jamison said the greater aim of the organization is to make it so neighbors know and look out for one another.

He said they hold a neighborhood block party on the Fourth of July and a Christmas dinner where residents are invited. Police and fire officials are welcome at those gatherings and have been supportive, Jamison said. He bragged particularly about the involvement of Police Chief Mike Williams and other officers.

“A lot of it’s just social,” Jamison said. “You get to know your neighbors. If you’re going for a walk, you throw up your hand to your friends and speak.”

Jamison said the quality of life in the South Beverly Hills neighborhood has improved considerably since the Terrace Apartments were demolished. He said whereas pedestrians once roamed their streets at all hours of the night, that’s seldom an issue anymore.

A neighboring car wash where noise was a problem no longer exists and the speed limit along Rolling Road has been decreased from 35 to 25 mph. South Beverly Hills has suffered through the recent economic downturn like other neighborhoods, Jamison said, with too many houses in foreclosure.

But he said he feels the area will rebound as he hopes will all of east Burlington.

“If I know someone, I stop and speak,” Jamison said of those he’s met through the Neighborhood Association. “You have a tendency to look out for those you know.”

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?

What: A resident-driven, ongoing community work group whose members will identify the challenges facing east Burlington and come up with possible solutions.

Where: Fairchild Community Center at 827 S. Graham-Hopedale Road.

When: 6 p.m. on March 7.

Who’s invited: Any resident or stakeholder interested in east Burlington.